Inner Authority

"I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.”

-- Hermann Hesse

The Gift of Fear

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”  ― Eleanor Roosevelt

Timely wisdom.

"One of the core competencies of being human is that we are the only corner of creation that can refuse to be ourselves. The mountain is just the mountain, the cloud is just the cloud, and the tree is just the tree. That's why the natural world seems to be so nourishing to us - because we get an intonation of what it might be like just to be ourselves". 

-- David Whyte

The temple of the Heart

"Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.  There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground."  -- Rumi

The Wisdom of Darkness

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark.  
Go without sight,
And find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
And is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

-- Wendell Berry

Imperfection: the vehicle to all growth?

"Symmetry may have its appeal but it is inherently stale. Some kind of imbalance is behind every transformation."

-- astrophysicist, Marcelo Gleiser

Born Again (from Within!).

“There is in us an instinct for newness, for renewal, for a liberation of creative power. We seek to awaken in ourselves a force which really changes our lives from within. And yet the same instinct tells us that this change is a recovery of that which is deepest, most original, most personal in ourselves. To be born again is not to become somebody else, but to become ourselves.” - Thomas Merton

Hearing the Whole.

"It's an incredibly interesting risk, and you've got to trust that when you have surrendered, you will hear clearly. The Tao says the truth waits for eyes unclouded by longing, and your longing to have it different than it is, is ultimately a trap, because it keeps you from hearing the whole gestalt, the whole way things are. And as you hear the totality of it, you trust that out of that will come an appropriate action, a dharmic action. That's the trust of dharma, that's the trust in the wisdom of the universe that is greater than your own personal egoism. So there is certainly an exquisite risk in it. We're so used to working out of "I ought to do it, I should do it" -- getting behind ourselves and pushing. The whole idea of trusting, that if we didn't push something would still happen, is very interesting to explore in people."  -- Ram Dass

Deep Calls Out to Deep.

I had something like an enlightenment experience the other day.  I'm choosing the words "enlightenment experience" simply because the light of my own consciousness touched something that was previously unknown to me.  The words I've written below are an attempt to describe the revelation within the experience:

A human heart beats to a contracting rhythm of in and out, honoring the pattern of union and separation and union again.  Cells do this same dance when they divide from one another, in order to only return to each other again.  We remember to let our lungs fill up again with our breath only because we first notice how it has gone out.  I marvel at these movements and wonder if this is the whole creative pattern of the Universe.

Love once told me that it disconnects from Itself in order to get an experience of Itself.  And of course it would!  Love wouldn't be Love if it didn't want to Love itself too.  Similarly, John O'Donohue once reminded me that one of the real excitements of being a human is that we are the place where the Universe can become conscious of Itself.  The alchemists seemed to understand this when they tried to channel this precise dynamic in order to turn base metals into gold.  Plato, too, suggested that a similar psychological movement pattern would increase our own awareness of ourselves.  And God told us it was Good when He parted Day from Night.  Perhaps Adam and Eve had to experience their own shame in order to encounter their True longings.  What then, really, is shame?  Perhaps shame is simply BELIEVING that our separateness is fixed instead of mutable.  

Maybe we have also been given the same set of initiation rites as our ancestors in Eden.  If so, it might be helpful to recall how their redemption arrived through a being that could remember his full Divinity and full humanity too.  Perhaps we too must be initiated into our own sense of separateness, experience our deep longing to return, in order to find our own authentic way back to this remembering.  

But, why all this trouble?  I have no idea.  Nonetheless, this experience of disconnection and reconnection appears to be the life-generating movement pattern of the cosmos.  Perhaps it's like this:  by the time we start remembering our connection, we've already been deeply initiated into the experience of our separateness, which enables us to become powerful messengers of the Truth of both realities.  I think John O'Donohue was right about one of the real excitements of being a human. We really can learn how to be the place where the Universe can become conscious of Itself.

The intelligence of humility.

“I’ve seen how you can’t learn anything when you’re trying to look like the smartest person in the room.”  -- Barbara Kingsolver

Task of Love.

"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it".  - Rumi

Not mad, just human.

"We are not mad, we are human. 
We want to love and someone must forgive us for the paths we take to love. 
For the paths are many and dark, 
and we are ardent and cruel in our journey."

-- Leonard Cohen

Rosa Parks!

I am absolutely devoted to the practice of "Active Imagination" as a method for remembering what we already know.  One of my favorite examples of how this practice can be so powerful came to me via advice I received from an amazing energy intuitive named Marie Manuchehri.  She told me that I should regularly visit an imaginal space within myself where I could dialogue with being I respect. These beings could be alive or dead, historical or spiritual, personally known or unknown, etc.  During one of these Active Imagination exercises, I wound up having a stunning conversation with Rosa Parks.

And here's the fundamental wisdom she shared with me during that time:  Rosa said that she had to believe wholeheartedly that she really mattered.  And it was only this deep inner conviction that allowed her to live outside of overwhelming fear, oppression, violence, and hate.  She said she did not realize it at the time, but it was precisely by acting out this conviction that her own experience mattered just as much as anyone else's that empowered other people to liberate themselves similarly.

Beautiful, Rosa!  I'm trying to remember that humble, brilliant example as often as I can lately.

Collaborative Intelligence

"A fantastic model of collaboration:  thinking partners who aren't echo chambers".  - Margaret Heffernan

.... If you're interested in getting your mind semi-blown, watch this TedTalk.  If you need incentive to actually spend 12 minutes viewing this, let me summarize it for you:  unless you are willing to engage in creative conflict with others, you will limit your potential contribution to the world significantly.

Imaginal Intelligence

Imagination is another one of those intelligences that gets so much praise in our early development before it becomes subjected to a full-fledged beating by the systems that value immediately tangible results.  Tragically, it's often our schools and workplaces that are the greatest adversaries of imaginal intelligence.  I say 'tragically' because after the age of 5, we will likely spend most of our waking hours in one of those two environments.  The great irony of all of this is that our schools and workplaces are set up in order to teach or facilitate ideas that have their origins in the genius of human imagination.  I might even argue that ALL great innovators, leaders, artists, and thinkers have been aided by the intelligence of their own imagination.

So here's a fun exercise for affirming the sacred intelligence our own imaginations:  IMAGINE a panel of your favorite geniuses (be they social, creative, spiritual, or scientific).  Seriously.

Now, look around at who has assembled and how they have assembled.  Are you indoors, out of doors, seated at a long or round table?  Or is a casual social gathering?  Really look and see who's there and how you are all interacting with each other.  Trust whatever arises.

And then start naming names.  Einstein?  Buddha?  Jesus?  Martin Luther King Jr?  William Shakespeare?  Justin Bieber?  Seriously.  This is personal and there's no right or wrong answer.  So simply name the crowd at your gathering by actually looking to see who's there.

Next, I want you to address one of them and ask them about the role imagination played in their life on Earth.  Ask the question sincerely, and then allow this imaginal figure to answer you just as sincerely.  Here's a tip:  it doesn't matter if you think you're making this all up in your imagination.  In fact, that's the whole point.

If you wind up enjoying yourself or gaining anything useful, feel free to ask other guests other questions about anything at all you've ever wanted to know!

I'll post the information I once gathered from my imaginal conversation with Rosa Parks soon!

Morning Poem by Mary Oliver

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.